European Aviation Environmental Report 2016

38 European Aviation Environmental Report 2016
characteristics with comparable behaviour to
fossil fuel during the fuel combustion phase.
Potential emissions savings from using biofuels
may be as large as 80%, but depend highly
on the feedstock type and the production
processes. For biofuels originating from
agricultural crops, special attention must be
paid to the potential emissions generated by the
direct or indirect land use conversion induced by
the cultivation of the crops 19 . From this point of
view and regarding possible risks of competition
with food production, alternative fuels produced
from wastes are of special interest.
An additional benefit from the use of alternative
fuels could be improved air quality. Depending
on the type of production pathway, alternative
fuels may contain no aromatics and sulphur,
leading to a significant reduction of soot and
sulphur oxides emissions when blended with
conventional jet fuel.
3.3 Market for sustainable
alternative fuels
In 2009 the European Commission initiated the
SWAFEA study [37] to investigate the feasibility
and impact of the use of alternative fuels in
aviation to support future air transport policy
discussions. The main recommendations
covered various areas including economics,
policy, sustainability, research and coordination.
The output of this study fed into discussions
with aircraft manufacturers, airline operators
and European biofuel producers, and in
2011 resulted in the launch of the ‘European
Advanced Biofuels Flightpath’ 20 [38]. This is an
industry‐wide initiative to accelerate the market
uptake of aviation biofuels in Europe. It provides
a roadmap to achieve an annual production
rate of 2.06 million tonnes of oil equivalent
(2.06 Mtoe / 600 million gallons) of sustainably
produced biofuel for civil aviation in Europe by
the year 2020 21 .
To support the emergence of sustainable
aviation alternative fuels in Europe, aviation has
also been included in the so‐called Renewable
Energy Directive [39], which defines a mandatory
target of 10% renewable energy content
in transportation fuels by 2020 22 . Aviation
biofuels meeting the sustainability criteria of
the Renewable Energy Directive are exempted
from obligations under the EU ETS. Moreover,
aviation fuels can contribute to the additional
target set by the European Fuel Quality Directive
[40] to cut the greenhouse gas intensity of
transportation fossil fuels supplied in the EU by
6% in 2020 compared to a 2010 baseline.
Commercial facilities exist in Europe for
hydroprocessing of vegetable oils and animal
fats (HEFA/HVO), although these facilities are
focused on diesel fuel production and are not
specifically designed for jet fuel production.
The potential use of green diesel would make
existing production capacity available to aviation
and lead to a biofuel with lower costs than HEFA/
HVO, although use of green diesel in aviation
would face competition with road transportation
where conditions are more favorable to biofuels
and incentives are already in place.
Production costs for sustainable alternative
aviation fuels are expected to decrease once
experience is accrued, the production volume
increases and more producers enter the
market. Sustained access to low‐cost feedstocks
is also considered necessary to become
cost‐competitive with conventional kerosene. In
addition, capital investment may be a significant
hurdle for the development of the sustainable
aviation fuel industry infrastructure, which can
be quite different depending on the chosen
production pathway.
Due to the current price gap with conventional
jet fuel, demand for sustainable alternative
fuels has so far been limited to ad‐hoc airline
demonstration flights and pilot phases of
sustainable biofuel supply chains by biofuel
producers [41]. Consequently, to date, there
19 Indirect land conversion may occur due to the displacement of existing crops to produce biofuels.
20 Biofuels are alternative fuels produced from biomass (e.g. feedstock, vegetable oils and animal fats, waste).
21 In comparison, the US Farm to Fly initiatives aim at producing one billion gallons of sustainable jet fuel by 2018. Note
the definition of sustainable biofuels is currently different in the EU and US regulatory frameworks.
22 To date, Indonesia is the only country to have introduced a biojet fuel mandate. This starts at 2% in 2016 and rises to
5% by 2025.